Harry J. Cohen (1914) 🇺🇸
Under the corporate name of The Popular Plays and Players Company, Harry J. Cohen, best known from his popular connections with the General Film Company and general manager of the feature department, and associates have launched what purports to be an important addition to the recent group of high class producers of famous plays in screen form. The new organization is housed in the Mecca Building, and from the busy appearance of the offices the first announcement of the concern is meeting with a responsive chord.
Harry Cohen, general executive of the company and a part owner, began his theatrical career as advertising manager for Hooley’s Theater (now Powers’), Chicago. Graduating from this, he launched into the theatrical end and for seventeen seasons handled the various heavy productions throughout the West, his last being that of The Burgomaster. For seven years with Harry Davis of Pittsburgh, he entered the film field, and while associated with Klimt & Gazzola he opened the first film show in Chicago. Mr. Cohen was among the first to realize the importance of exploiting films by means of lithographic paper. He opened the first exchange at Toronto for George Kleine and then became manager of various branches for the General Film Company, with which concern he remained until March 17 of this year, when he decided to strike out for himself.
The first production of the Popular Plays and Players Company will be Michael Strogoff, now being produced by Lubin with a star cast of Lubin players headed by the eminent character romancer, Jacob P. Adler. This initial production should be a classic in that Mr. Lubin is devoting his best players and directors to the making of it and the company is making every effort to turn out a gigantic production.
Following Michael Strogoff Andrew Mack will be presented in The Ragged Earl, and then Margaret Anglin in one of the most popular successes. For Michael Strogoff the Popular Plays and Players Company is using fifteen Tartar soldiers loaned them for intermittent periods by the Russian Ambassador at Washington. Quite a little territory has already been disposed of.
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“With His Hands.”
Fifth of the Edison Series in “The Man Who Disappeared.”
Reviewed by Louis Reeves Harrison.
Cast.
John Perriton, alias “John Pottle”… Marc MacDermott
Jennie… Marjorie Ellison
President Carter… Harry Linson
Mr. Earle, Superintendent… Joe Manning
Mr. Brownson, a detective… Floyd France
Mr. O’Rourke. foreman… George Melville
The Police Inspector… Warren Cook
Extraordinary in showing how skillful treatment can occasionally provide interest when it seems to be lacking in the scenario, With His Hands will set the nerves of the uninitiated on edge and puzzle not a few who are familiar with methods of production. Every incident of the story leads up to a struggle between two desperate men on the top girders of an incomplete skyscraper in the lower part of New York City, with a background no studio in the world could realistically reproduce. But even this realism is subordinate to a new pattern of background which will delight the eyes of all who behold it.
The stage director may sit down and sketch a design historically accurate or containing certain intrinsic elements of beauty, but the motion picture director can sweep the seas, scale mountain crags, or even ascend into tiny heavens for his effects. Director Brabin [Charles Brabin] has taken us to the top of a tall building in lower New York from which there are amid views of East River bridges, of tiny Woolworth and Singer towers, of the city from an elevated viewpoint, even to an elevated train winding far below on its devious course.
He has brought into harmony the scenes, characters and of the drama to be pictured. The struggle in midair, though we know it to be acting, is now so perfectly in tune with the wondrous background that it acquires an actual thrill from its intense realism. One can scarcely help thinking that the performers are taking terrible chances in enacing their roles, so cleverly placed are the scenes, outranking any others of the kind ever shown in moving pictures. It seems almost a pity to have such treatment lavished on a story so lacking in intrinsic novelty. It is the outworn narrative of the honest workman and villainous boss with a detective thrown in for good measure on the villainy side. The detective schemes a frame-up on the honest workman where the “goil” can hear every word of it — all stage schemers are overheard — and the “goil” foils the villain, the kind of story that is founded on one of Yorick’s six plots, made while you wait.
Fine treatment elevates it to a picture story of strong interest, thanks entirely to the accomplished director and his company, not excluding the camera man.
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Scene from With His Hands (Edison).
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“Pop” Lubin Back in Philadelphia.
Siegmund Lubin, the motion picture manufacturer returned to his office in Philadelphia, May 11th, after a trip to Europe which lasted six weeks. Mr. Lubin was the recipient of several testimonials in which several of his executives shared. Chief of these was the presentation of a poem from the pen of Hugh A. D’Arcy, the advertising manager of the firm which was endorsed by 565 of Mr. Lubin’s employees and studio artists. As a special surprise the manufacturer found upon his return that General Manager Ira M. Lowry, had ordered rushed to completion a new office building, two stories in height, which was entirely constructed during Mr. Lubin’s absence abroad.
Collection: Moving Picture World, May 1914